TOLEDO.
BRIDGE OF SAN MARTIN.
AMIROLA[24] has given us an excellent account of the origin of this noble mediæval bridge, upon which the following short statement is mainly based. Near to the site on which the bridge of St. Martin now stands at Toledo, there was formerly a fine Roman bridge. This having been entirely destroyed for useful purposes, by a tremendous flood which rose, according to the most ancient annals of Toledo, in the year 1212, the city determined upon building another bridge upon a better site. Having erected abutments of vast strength, which were ultimately crowned and weighted with two towers for defence, and having bedded two solid piers in the line of the stream, their master of the works, Rodrigo Alfonso, proceeded to span it with one of three lofty arches, two of which are shown in my sketch. This magnificent arch of one hundred and forty Spanish feet in width, and ninety-five in height was destroyed in the terrible struggle between the King Don Pedro, and his brother Don Henrique, in the year 1368. It was shortly after rebuilt, and the bridge generally repaired by the great Don Tenorio, Archbishop of Toledo. Villa Franca, Alcala de Heñares, and the neighbourhood of Alamin, all boasted of bridges put up by the same Rodrigo Alfonso, who designed the bridge of San Martin at Toledo.
Beyond the bridge, in my sketch, appears on the crest of the hill the mass of the beautiful, though somewhat over florid church, San Juan de los Reyes. Having been erected by Ferdinand and Isabella, in a period as late as 1476, it fails to enlist the sympathies and approbation of some; others have praised it enthusiastically, and certain it is, that if it may have possessed faults when complete, scarcely anything can be more picturesque as a ruin.
PLATE XXXVIII.
TOLEDO.
MOORISH GATEWAY BY THE BRIDGE OF ALCANTARA.
NEAR to the bridge of Alcantara (sketch No. 36) on the road leading up from it to the city, stands the celebrated Moorish gateway of the "Puerta del Sol." This strong, large, and well fortified approach to the city, I found to labour under two marked disadvantages for my sketch-book, viz., it had been too often illustrated, and its curious details had been so vigorously "restored" (when Spaniards do "restore" there is no mistake about it), as to have lost in a great degree its original and authentic characteristics. I looked about, therefore, in the immediate vicinity of the bridge, for other vestiges of the antiquity of the city. These I soon came upon in the old gateway of which I give a sketch, and to the construction of which, both Roman and Moor have contributed. As the poor heavily laden mules laboured up the dusty stony road, with the patience of, in Spain, a much-abused race, it was impossible not to speculate upon the generations upon generations which had followed in the same track up the same road, on the same duty, through every vicissitude of occupation of the Gateway, through which they swayed monotonously from side to side.